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In this video I want to introduce you to heat shrink tubing, which is pretty neat stuff
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and it's going to enter into some of the electrical connections that you make for this project
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So here's my collection of heat shrink tubing. There's two kinds here. There's just the regular
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kind, which is a kind of a plastic sleeve that shrinks down when you heat with it, as the name
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suggests, and I'll be showing you that in a minute. There's another kind here and it looks
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the same, but inside there's a heat sensitive sealant. So not only does this tubing shrink down
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but the sealant melts and seals the joint against any water that might get in. You can sort of see
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the shiny inner surface here. That's the heat activated sealant and you may see that bubbling
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out as I demonstrate a joint for you here. So I've got a soldered joint here. I call it an inline
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joint. I've wrapped the wires together and soldered them. That's going to be a great electrical
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connection, but of course we need to extend the insulation over the whole thing to keep it from
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shorting out and to protect it. So that's where this heat shrink tubing comes in. You've often
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got to remember to put it on before you complete the solder joint because once it's completed
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unless there's an end around, you won't be able to get your heat shrink tubing on and it's going
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to be just large enough to cover the joint. Just large enough in diameter. So a torch works very
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well. You can use a match too. You don't want to give it too much heat, but I'll just spark up this torch here
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It doesn't take much heat. You can easily overdo it. So you just want the torch on very low like
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you can see here and I'm just going to warm it and keep my eye on that tubing. You can see it's
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starting to do its thing. You want to do it everywhere. Backside, frontside
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And there you go. It's all shrunk. Now if you look up here, you can see some of that heat activated
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sealant that I was telling you about. It's kind of like hot melt glue, I think. A little more flexible
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than that, but it seals the joint. So now this is not only protected, but it's also sealed, which is
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what you want if there's any areas of moisture that this wire is going to be going through
